


Seas Between Us Broad Have Roared

by Lono



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-04
Updated: 2015-01-04
Packaged: 2018-03-05 05:54:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,774
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3108512
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lono/pseuds/Lono
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A conversation in the dark hours of New Year's Day.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Seas Between Us Broad Have Roared

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted on Tumblr.
> 
> Story title is from Robert Burns' "Auld Lang Syne" because I'm a walking cliché.

When the New Year rings in to London, the strains of Auld Lang Syne, the clinking of glasses, and the carousing of celebrants do not reach the morgue of St. Bartholomew’s Hospital. Instead, the hum of the refrigerated drawers, the whir of lab equipment, and, from a small office offset from the main area, the clacking of fingers typing on a keyboard fill the night’s stillness.

In fact, the only living person in the morgue doesn’t even notice the old year’s passing.

Signing and electronically submitting the last form in her work pile at 00:03, Molly Hooper doesn’t spare a glance at the clock on her monitor. For a person who spends her days surrounded by the dead, time has the tendency to crawl and sprint in equal measure, and she’s found it less stressful to avoid tracking the hours as much as possible. So, tonight, she stares at her monitor’s desktop background—a photograph she took in The Hague on a snowy morning earlier that month—and considers pulling up some Drunk History excerpts to pass the time. And then she silently acknowledges that any attempts to distract herself with silly videos would be tantamount to stuffing cotton balls in one’s ears to plug out the sound of a klaxon five feet away: insufficient, to say the least.

Putting the computer to sleep, instead, she leans her elbows on her desk and fiddles with the pile of ball magnets she keeps for days when she’s fidgety. Staring in the darkest corner of her office, she splits the bunch in two and holds the halves close enough that she can feel the first pulls of their magnetism.

Her eyes burn, but she won't cry again.

* * *

He finds her there five minutes later, still watching the shadows that do battle with the weak glow from her tiny desk lamp.  He does the uncharacteristic thing and drinks her in before she can notice him.

The lamp casts striations of light and dark across her face. Her eyes are glittering pitch and her hair is nearly as black, while her lashes and brows are shots of golds and blonds. It might be considered a flattering look, but her exhaustion is too obvious in her posture and the set of her mouth.

He’s spoken to his brother and knows that she protested the mere suggestion that Jim Moriarty might target her, but the cold clutch in his belly isn’t necessary to tell him that Molly is terrified.   Not for the first time, he questions his insistence on being the one to tell her the truth of the matter.  

There’s no way not to startle her, so he decides finally to get it out of the way.

“Molly.” He keeps his voice low and he tries for a gentleness that he’s never quite managed.

As he predicted, she still gasps and drops her magnets with a thunk as she whirls to look at him. She shakes her head, blinking rapidly.

“Sherlock.” And again, in a whisper, “Sherlock."

He moves into the office, shutting the door behind him and snicking the lock into place. “Hello,” he greets her, frowning as he waits .

“You’re here.” She blinks rapidly, like she can’t quite believe it.

“Stay of execution. The Powers that Be decided to let me stick around in light of recent events.”

A wobbly grin appears for a flash before her sorrow wins out again. But she rolls her chair over in silent invitation.

Nodding, he moves behind the desk and grabs the metal folding chair that she keeps stowed between the wall and a file cabinet. He mirrors her earlier pose, resting his forearms on the desk and picking up the magnets. While he sets to creating a coil pattern, he pulls in a bracing breath.

“I wanted to come and tell you the moment I got off of the plane, but they wouldn’t let me. There was an interrogation and  _paperwork_.” He says it as if the latter were far more egregious than the heated questions and suspicious gazes of government officials. “Plus Mycroft suggested I let the drugs wear off,” he admits cautiously.

She pulls in a deep, measured breath. Rather than lashing out about the drugs, though, she moves her chair a breath closer to his. “And the length of this stay of execution?”

His lips twitch—first time in hours—at her casual tone.  “Meaning, ‘When will I be rid of you again?’” he asks.

Sputtering, she shakes her head. “Sherlock Holmes, you are an arse and if you think that’s why I was ask—"

He smirks. “I don’t. I was teasing. I’ve heard that’s a thing. But to answer your grave-dance of a question”—his lips spread into a full grin as she growls, and then he sobers again—“it’s a permanent stay. So long as I avoid murdering anyone else.”

Though he hears her sniffle, he doesn’t move his eyes away from the Bucky balls.

“And you plan to adhere with their terms?” she asks carefully.

He frowns down at the magnets, unable to get the polarity right between two of them. Fumbling with the magnets, fumbling for words, he knows deep down.

“Sherlock?”

“I protect what’s mine,” is all he can finally manage.

She grabs half of the magnets from him and ignores his noise of protest (his fingers twitch from the fleeting contact of her hands brushing his).

Brow furrowed, she begins setting up a new pattern. “ _What’s yours_. That’s a cavemannish thing to say.”

“True, however,” he says with a shrug.

She licks her lips. “And do you think you’ll have to ‘protect what’s yours’ a lot?”

He watches her out of the corner of his eye. “I have a tendency to rub people the wrong way. It comes up from time to time.”

“Right,” she agrees with an agitated shrug. “But murderously so?”

“I’m not  _hoping_  for it,” he says peevishly. “I didn’t  _like_ taking Magnussen’s life.”

“But you did. And that scares me,” she admits. “That you would go that far.”

“I won’t make promises that I can’t keep, Molly. But you know I’d never hurt someone who didn’t deserve—"

“That’s the thing that scares me.” Her voice has risen with her agitation. “You’re not judge and jury, so it shouldn’t be up to you.”

Chagrined, he drops the magnets to the blotter and studies his [ineffectual] hands. “I’m sorry.”

“Are you?”

He shudders. “I don’t know. I can’t sleep. I haven’t in six days. I just keep feeling the gun recoil in my hands. But it was—Mary needed—Molly, what could I have done?”

She grabs his hand and his fingers convulse around hers.

“Promise me something,” she whispers to him.

“What?”

“ _If_ there is a next time, you’ll  _talk_  to your brother or John or Mary or me before you go tearing off on your own? You don’t have to come up with a solution every time. I… I think we’ve shown you that we can help you. Or am I wrong?”

“No,” he says with a sigh that releases some of the tension in his shoulders and belly. “You’re not wrong. You rarely are.”

“I thought I was wrong once, but I was mistaken,” she chirps, a sad attempt to lighten the mood.

He doesn’t reply. He just watches her.

“And Moriarty?” she asks quietly, serious once more.

Jerking around, Sherlock hitches up a shoulder in discomfort. “Yes. About that.”

“It was Mycroft, wasn’t it?”

His head drops forward and a mad grin spreads. “How’d you—“

“I wondered when I saw it. It happened right when your plane was set to take off. But I wasn’t sure. And then some men came in a couple hours later. They told me that I’d need a security detail. I said I didn’t and they backed down too quickly. So I  _hoped._  But I didn’t _know_ until I saw you here.”

Uncomfortable with his brother’s devotion Sherlock admits, “He was desperate."

“He loves you,” she says frankly.  The snort he gives is hardly attractive. “And you love him.”

Sherlock sighs gustily and does a casual stretch, letting his arm settle around her shoulders.

Her eyebrow arches. “Subtle subject change,” she mockingly congratulates him.

“I was simply going to thank you. Again.”

She stares at him, studies him, for a pregnant moment, but relents. He knows it’s only temporary, but he’ll grab onto it while he can. 

She turns into him, sidling up close in her roller chair until her side is pressed flush against his. “If you think smooth talk will distract me from arguing with you about things like the drugs you mentioned or even fluff like what your brother will do for you,” she says, smoothing his shirt collar, “you’re right. For now.”

“I thought I was wrong once,” he parrots, gratefully pulling her into a hug, comfortable despite the newness of it. “Turns out I was mistaken.” He glances down at her wristwatch above the hand clutching his forearm. “And would you look at that? It’s the New Year. I seem to recall a stupid tradition—“

“Stupid?” she interrupts archly.

He blinks at her innocently. “Stupid for everyone but us. It’s perfectly reasonable when we do it.”

She nods, face serious. “Much better.”

He cups her face and leans in. “Happy New Year, Molly Hooper,” he murmurs.

“Happy New Year, Sherlock Holmes,” she replies, but he cuts her off by taking her mouth in a heated kiss.

They part several minutes later.

“When they took you away this morning,” he whispers, pulling back to meet her eyes, “it felt more final than anything else.”  As is ever the case with Molly, it’s easy to be honest with her, especially here, with the morgue’s ambient hums as the only soundtrack.

“I told myself I would see you again,” she says simply. “I had to believe it. I came to work for the distraction and I even got  _three_  whole forms finished over the twelve hours. Just got done with the last right before you got here.”

“I hope they were important forms,” he sniffs. “I expect desolate tears and staring at a picture of me for  _at least_  twenty-four hours for anything less than a death certificate.”

“Oh, they were,” she promises, bumping his nose with hers. She smiles and he pays her back in kind. Finally, though, she grows tired of gazing at him like a moony-eyed calf. She huffs, “Can we please get back to traditioning?”

He squints. “That’s not a word.”

She doesn’t reply; she merely kisses him again, and he goes along with it. It’s just easier than arguing, of course.


End file.
